Janszoon voyage of 1605–1606
Overall, his voyage was not immediately recognized as significant at the time, as the Dutch East India Company was primarily interested in finding a faster route to the Spice Islands.
He recorded that on 18 November 1605 "a small Dutch pinnace departed here for the discovery of the island called New Guinea, which, it is said, may yield a great amount of wealth".
[6] After exploring the coast of Papua, Duyfken rounded Vals Point and crossed the eastern end of the Arafura Sea—without seeing the Torres Strait—into the Gulf of Carpentaria, and on 26 February 1606 made landfall at a river on the western shore of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, near the modern town of Weipa.
[9] According to the VOC's instructions to Tasman (1644), Janszoon and his crew travelled along 350 kilometres (220 mi) of coast, from 5° south to 13° 45' south, but found[This quote needs a citation] that vast regions were for the greater part uncultivated, and certain parts inhabited by savage, cruel black barbarians who slew some of our sailors, so that no information was obtained touching the exact situation of the country and regarding the commodities obtainable and in demand there.He found the land to be swampy and infertile, forcing the explorers eventually to give up and return to Bantam due to their lack of "provisions and other necessaries".
[This quote needs a citation] Nevertheless, it appears that the killing of some of his men on various shore expeditions was the main reason for their return—he turned back where his party had its greatest conflict with Aboriginal people, which he subsequently called Kaap Keerweer,[g 3] Dutch for 'Cape Turnback'.
The book Mapoon, written by members of the Wik-Mungkan people and edited by Janine Roberts, contains an account of this landing passed down in Aboriginal oral history:[10] The Europeans sailed along from overseas and put up a building at Cape Keerweer.
[13] On 15 June 1606, Captain Saris reported the arrival of[b] ... Nockhoda Tingall, a Tamil from Banda, in a Javanese junk, laden with mace and nutmegs, which he sold to the Gujaratis; he told me that the Dutch pinnace that went to explore New Guinea had returned to Banda, having found it: but in sending their men on shore to propose trade, nine of them were killed by the heathens, who are man-eaters: so they were forced to return, finding no good to be done there.A reference to the outcome of the expedition was made as a result of Willem Schouten's 1615 voyage on behalf of the Australische Compagnie from the Netherlands to the Spice Islands via Cape Horn.
The VOC sought an order from the Dutch Government prohibiting the Australische Compagnie from operating between Ceylon and 100 miles (160 km) east of the Solomon Islands.
In 1618, it presented a memorandum in pursuit of this order that included the following:[15] ... seeing that the United East-India Company has repeatedly given orders for the discovering and exploring the land of Nova Guinea, and the islands east of the same, since, equally by our orders, such discovery was once tried about the year 1606 with the yacht de Duyve by Skipper Willem Jansz and sub-cargo Jan Lodewijs van Rosinghijn, who made sundry discoveries on the said coast of Nova Guinea, as is amply set forth in their journals.Willem Janszoon returned to the Netherlands apparently in the belief that the south coast of New Guinea was joined to the land along which he sailed, although his own chart did not verify his claim to have continuously followed the coastline where the Torres Strait is found.
[16][17] In 1622, prior to Jan Carstenszoon's 1623 exploration of the Gulf of Carpentaria, Hessel Gerritsz published a map, which included the coastline of part of the west coast of Cape York.
[18][Link to precise page] The Spanish maps would have reflected Luis Váez de Torres's voyage through the strait named after him, which he completed in early October 1606, although the Dutch knew nothing of it.
'shallow bay'), where Nova-Guinea is surmised to be cut off from the rest of the Southland by a passage opening into the great South-Sea, though our men have been unable to pass through it owing to the shallows, so that it remains uncertain whether this strait is open on the other side.However, some Dutch maps, but not others like Gerritszoon's map of 1622, still showed Cape York and New Guinea as being contiguous, until James Cook, who was aware of Torres' voyage through Alexander Dalrymple, sailed through the strait on his first voyage in 1770.
